Early Morning Happenings
by Reyuna Yukimura
Summary: The Avengers forge an unbreakable bond every single morning as they eat breakfast, deal with each other, and reinforce the memories that will last them until the next one. Steve/Tony preslash hint. family!Avengers.


Written by Rey; beta'ed by LoveIsMyMiddleName, because she is a saint. This has faint hints of Steve/Tony preslash, so headsup!** R and R**!

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None of them are quite sure as to whether it's sad or not, but mornings in the Avengers household consists of the same exact routine every day. To be honest, each and every one of them is glad for it and they all take comfort in the knowledge that when they wake up, everything will be strikesafe/strike the same, just for a couple of hours.

Steve will wake up, and go for his morning run.

Bruce and Tony will wake soon after because their bodies just aren't capable of processing sleep for more than three hours at a time. And because their brains haven't gotten that memo and aren't _actually_ up and running yet, the two of them will come to kitchen and stare at the coffee machine like it's sold their first born because _there is no coffee in the pot_ _why god why_.

Natasha will come in around that time, freshly showered after a few hours of training simulations, and she'll just shake her head because really, boys? Then, because she loves them anyway, she will sit them both down, turn on the damned machine, and allow them to smoosh their faces into her stomach as a way of saying _thank you, we owe you our collective soul and our first-borns_. Hell, she'll even let them doze off that way, and run her fingers through Tony's hair because she knows he gets horrible caffeine headaches when he isn't properly dosed up.

Clint will walk in around the same time that the coffee machine dings and he'll get roped into taking Natasha's place as she goes to get the caffeine because he's not allowed near anything technological on pain of death.

Bruce won't even notice the body switch between Natasha and Clint, but Tony will. He'll look up, dark eyes wide with suspicion even though this happens _every single morning. _Then he'll see that it's just Clint and smile, open and guileless and _soft_, and then he'll smoosh his face right back in and doze off again. This will leave Clint with the slightly horrifying and simultaneous urges to kiss the man on the forehead and to hug him, and as usual, he'll barely manage to keep from doing it. In the end, he won't be able to stop himself from running his fingers through Tony's hair in the same way he's seen Natasha do, because he knows it does something nice for the man and because Tony won't stop head-butting his hand until he does.

The loss of manliness will be worth it though, because Natasha will actually smile at him when she sees what he's going before slamming down two barrel-sized cups of coffee in front of the comatose wonders.

Thor will walk in around the same time Bruce and Tony will leap for their respective mugs, and laugh jovially even as he reaches for a box of Poptarts.

If it's not a Tuesday or a Thursday ("THORSday! Get it?" Clint had crowed out at the time), however, Natasha will smack his hand and just _look_ at him until he backs off because they'd all decided—ages ago—that they don't want him to get scurvy, demi-god powers be damned. As it is, they only let him have them on those two days because Thor's puppy face is a greater weapon of mass destruction than his hammer can ever hope to be and they are weak, weak people against forces of such great magnitude.

In the end, because Natasha isn't completely heartless, she'll let him hug her and woefully snuffle into her neck a bit before making him join Bruce and Tony at the table—still sans Poptarts— where he can join in on wallowing in abject misery and actually have a wholesome breakfast.

Clint will pat his shoulder in sympathy and offer a smile, because he's not allowed to have junk food before noon either, and he knows how that hurts.

This is about when Steve will walk in, freshly showered and dripping in a way that'll actually distract Tony from his coffee for a moment. But it'll only be for a second or two because Tony may be in hopeless, angsty, unrequited love with the Cap, but he's got his priorities straight.

In return, Steve will stare for just a second, indulging in the puppy-like adorableness of a pre-caffeinated Tony Stark and letting himself _feel_, before resolutely turning away to make food because he'll never _have_ that and also, he's the only one in the house who can cook worth a damn.

Natasha will roll her eyes at the both of them before moving to set the table.

At one point, Clint will move to stop Tony and Bruce from making a run for their labs because they're still not awake, but they've reached the bottom of their respective coffees and therefore, their bodies think that it's strikefun/strike work-time. He'll rant and curse as he herds and shoves at the two scientists until they sit their asses back down, and he'll tell them to get the sad looks off their faces dammit, because he is not the bad guy here.

Tony and Bruce- for their part- will still be confused as anything, but they'll do as Clint asks because he has a comfy stomach and they can go back to leaning on it and why were they even trying to get up again? They'll just shrug and even more face-smooshing will commence, which Clint will bear with a long-suffering sigh and a fond smile that he'll try to hide.

And through it all, Steve will smile as he mans the stove because this is his team, his _family_, and he feels so, _so_ glad that he has this that it almost chokes him. But he'll still pretend to be unaffected as he churns out everyone's favorite breakfast foods because if he doesn't, he'll end up doing something like initiating a group hug and then everyone will make fun of him forever.

After that, in no time at all, Natasha will raise an approving eyebrow as Steve hands over her pancakes and bacon, and Clint will be making happy noises as he works his way through a small mountain of fried omelettes and toast. Thor will woefully accept his waffles, toast, bacon, pancakes and eggs, and Bruce and Tony will stare like zombies until Steve makes them scrambled eggs and oatmeal because he's afraid that they'll choke on anything else. He will also refill their barrels with more coffee and only tut a little about their caffeine intake and why can't they use regular sized coffee cups like normal people?

He won't bother to keep up the lecture for too long though, because they'll be too busy leaping for their cups again to really pay attention anyway.

Steve will just shake his head and make one last plate of food, which he'll set at the empty space between Thor and Clint. Then, he'll finally grabbing his own breakfast and sit himself down between Tony and Thor, and after poking at Tony a bit to wake him up a bit, he'll start eating.

A few minutes after that, Phil will walk in with his ear glued to his phone and he will spend a few more minutes barking out terse orders because the people under him are morons and he's a bit of a control freak.

Out of respect to his neurosis, they'll allow him about fifteen minutes of that. If he's not done by that point, Clint will barely allow him to finish his sentence before grabbing his phone and shutting it off, a shit-eating grin on his face because he loves pissing off his former handler more than anything else.

For his part, Phil will glare but he'll sit down and grab a fork because if he doesn't, Steve will make the sad-puppy eyes at him and he's just not man enough to deal with that.

And just like that, everyone will settle in, just a bit, because the entire family will be there, in one place, just for a little while.

Later on, they'll be too busy with fighting villains, paperwork, red-tape, and anything else SHIELD can think to throw at them; there'll be team missions, and solo missions, and enough stress to make everyone except Phil and Natasha flip tables. There will be fear and worry that one of them won't make it to the next day, because they're exhausted and their jobs are dangerous and there is a very real chance that one of them will die young.

Still though, every morning, they will wake up and have this; they'll have something to look forward to, something to fight towards when they're alone and scared and thinking of giving up because they're just so _tired_.

And should it ever get to that point, each and every single one of them will die without regrets, with the knowledge that they are loved and always will be. They'll go having had this, their hearts filled with smiles, and geniuses who become useless without coffee, and face-smooshed into abdominal muscles and breakfast and force-closed phones and poptart interventions.

For them, it's enough.

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Hope you liked! **R and R**, please!


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